Chapter 20 · Don't Touch That Memory

The name on Elias’s chest burned bright enough to hurt my eyes.

MICAH VANE.

It sat over his heart in sick green letters while he dropped to one knee on the tracks.

“Elias.” I caught him before his face hit the gravel. His blood soaked through my gloves, hot at first, then wrong. Cold. Like rainwater from a grave.

Behind us, the ghost train screamed its brakes.

Not metal. Not normal brakes. A hundred dead mouths dragging one long sound through the dark station.

Elias grabbed my wrist hard enough to make my fingers go numb. “Don’t touch it.”

“I’m literally holding you together right now.”

“The name.” His eyes snapped to mine. Gray, wide, scared in a way I had never seen on him. “Nora. Don’t touch the name.”

That got my attention.

Everything in me wanted to press my hand over Micah’s name and rip the green light out of him. That was my brother. My brother’s name. My brother was somewhere inside that train while dead hands dragged at his body.

So yeah.